Treatment of the bilge water

Running a ship’s engine and auxiliary machinery produces oily waste. These highly noxious oily chemical by-products collect in a vessel’s bilge and amount to millions of litres of oily waste streams each year.

Bilge discharge is considered to be one of the major factors contributing to the pollution of the oceans, and vessels are coming under increasing scrutiny by port state control authorities worldwide.

Oily bilge water is a mixture of water, oily fluids, lubricants and greases, cleaning fluids, detergents and other chemical wastes. The main sources of oily waste on board are ship engines, generators and other parts of the propulsion system, such as pipes, pumps and mechanical and operational components installed in ship machinery spaces.